I was in a play recently, and a few of the characters in it were an old order Mennonite couple. Many of the laughs they got were on the theme of pride. Many of us Mennonites grew up knowing pride as the cardinal sin. There are of course many scriptural passages that deal with pride, so of course that stance is easy to justify.
Another corrolory to that, is that competition leads to pride.
Growing up, the kids on our street would often get together and play soccer, baseball, hockey, or some kind of sport together. There was a couple of brothers from a more conservative Mennonite group than our own, that would play with us. One day they informed us, that since our sports were competition, that they could no longer play with us. Now there weren't a lot oc kids playing sports with us, so to lose two guys was a big hit, so we wanted to see if there was anything we could do to remedy this situation. They explained that their parents had said that when one team wins, then they get too proud, and that's wrong. So then we suggested that we could play without keeping score. They checked it with their parents, and they agreed, that if we weren't keeping score, then it was just a bunch of kids getting together to have fun, and there was nothing inherently sinful about that. The game of choice this time was soccer, and so we play along, and nobody ever said the score, but of course we all knew full well in our heads what the score actually was. So then we reached the agreed upon time, and the winning team all ran together to celebrate their victory, shouting, "We won! We won!" This confused these two guys, and those celebrating realized their error. So they asked us, "if we're not keeping score, how do you know if you won?" Running short on options here, my brother, a member of the winning team, said, "Well, we're celebrating because we had more fun than you guys did."
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Good evening everyone. Our fist episdoe was a huge success, and we're going to keep on making them until there isn't any more history to tell.
Our next guess, hailing all the way from Zurich, in the Confederation of Helvetian cantons, better known as Switzerland, please welcome Ulrich Zwingli
Thanks for having me on the show.
Thank you for coming!
The pleasure is all mine. Not everyone gets to come back after being dead for almost 500 years and appear on a famous talk show.
You're right, it's only a select few. So what are your thoughts of the world five hundred years later?
I guess I'm a little disapointed that there aren't any Zwinglian churches, and so many Calvinist churches. I guess that's what I get for dying early in battle.
You might also be surprised to know that most Mennonite churches are at least theological descendants of the radical Swiss Brethren you were executing.
Wow, that's perhaps most embarassing of all.
Well, before we get into those details, let's talk about your beginnings in the ministry in Zurich.
For a while I had been studying and preaching in the area, working my way up the ladder. So when the job in Zurich was open, I jumped on the opportunity.
Now, I heard that you almost didn't get the job, because of a rumour that you had defiled a nobleman's daughter. Is that true?
That really was blown out of proportion. It was she who seduced me, and her father was mrely a butcher.
I see. So what was it that set off your opposition of the Roman Catholic church?
It was a combination of things really. I was a military chaplain for a while, and I realized that Switzerland was getting rich hiring it's young men to fight in other people's wars. And when they came back, if they survived, they were either maimed from battle, or corrupted by what they had seen. And I saw the church doing nothing about it. Reading stuff written by Luther and Erasmus, I started to see that others were also upset with the church.
But you still remained a priest despite the corruption?
I remained a priest because of the corruption. The people were aching for change, and it was from the position of priest that I was most able to help effect that change. Having followed the humanist route,
I see. So what was it that set off your opposition of the Roman Catholic church?
Our next guest, often referred to as the Devil from Albstadt, coming to us from the Black Forest in Germany, please welcome Thomas Muntzer.
Thanks for that introduction, although I was never terribly comfortable with that nickname.
Where I come from, you don't get to choose your nickname. Maybe history will give me one as cool as yours.
I'm not sure how cool a nickname like 'Devil' is. Isn't hell supposed to be a hot place?
Listen Thomas, I tell the puns on this show! Now since you've been back, you've read up on what's happened since you died. Looking back, do you think you made any critical mistakes?
The biggest mistake I made was putting that much faith in that lying, cheating, back-stabbing crietan named Martin Luther.
Be careful, Martin is still in the building. Could you explain to us the way in which you came into prominence, and what Martin Luther had to do with that?
In my studies I came across some of Luther's works, and I bought into his teachings. He helped me get a job in Zwickau. People knew me as one of the Luther circle, and we even took turns defending each other in writing.
So what happened that you turned so violently against Luther?
As a pastor, I kept studying. I realized that the end of the world was imminent. Their was a war brewing with the Turks, plagues were spreading across Europe, weather was going crazy, and the Holy Spirit was being poured out on all people. It was clearly time for a cleansing of the souls of the upright, in preparation of the destruction of the godless.
But Thomas, it's 500 years later, clearly the end of the world was not upon you.
I could discuss that point further, but I have already been to the other side, and what I've learned there, you are not prepared to hear.
Will, today's doomsday prophets have nothing on me and my colleagues from that era. It was a different time than now. The end of the world was coming, and we knew it.
You are perhaps best known for your role in the Peasant's War. Can you tell us briefly what it was, and how it started?
When Martin Luther's ideas became common knowledge among the peasants, they took to them, like nobody expected. Luther wrote that we are all, peasants and nobility, equal in the spiritual estate. So you put this in a peasant's mind, when he already knows how corrupt the church and state are, and you are setting up a dangerous situation. All of a sudden, groups of these peasants were uniting against their authorities. They stormed castles and churches, trying to right the scales of justice. I joined with the peasants, convinced that they were going to be the ones to destroy the godless in preparation for the coming of Christ.
And that's how you met your end?
Yes, I brought an army to the battle of Frankenhausen, but it wasn't enough, and many of my soliders died, and I was arrested, tortured viciously and killed. It'd be easy to look back now and say I was foolish to go into a battle with such a small and untrained army, but we were morally in the right.
Most historians will not call you an Anabaptist, but there is an undeniable correlation between the areas that experienced turmoil during the peasant wars and the ones that later saw the growth of Anabaptism. Do you agree that this is some kind of connection?
I definitely see it, but I'm not sure that I deserve the credit. There was unrest in the souls of those peasants in those areas, and the way the Peasant War ended, that unrest was not resolved. These people were looking for new ideas, and Anabaptism gave that to them.
You were also embraced at one time by socialists and Marxists, saying that you were an early communist. How do you feel about that connection?
The Marxists looked at what I did, and replaced my religious motivations and replaced them with socialist convictions, and made me one of them. To take away divine inspiration from what I did, would be to misunderstand me and my entire time period.
Well, that's all the time we have. Thank you for being here with us. I was tempted to have all three of tonight's guests get together at the end of the show, this is however, a family show, and I could not be held responsible for how the meeting would have gone. Thanks everyone for coming, and I hope you come back again.